


Accusation

by trustmeimthe



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Blood Drinking, Gen, Gender Issues, Vampires, Verbal Abuse, gendered slurs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-23
Updated: 2015-10-23
Packaged: 2018-04-27 17:00:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5056594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trustmeimthe/pseuds/trustmeimthe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>how mal joined the army.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Accusation

It was her mother, oddly enough, who gave her the idea to join the army. Sort of.

All right, that was slightly oversimplified.

It was her mother who told her that she was a whore. Which was also oversimplified. The word did not mean whore precisely. It was a combination of a number of very nasty things which, said individually in Morporkian, could easily have led to manslaughter. However, Borogravian was a more complex language than and allegedly a superior language to Morporkian, and as such had much better insults.

It was one word, spat out on a venomous tongue, and if Maladicta had to translate it, she would say, “(You are a) disgusting disappointment, an unrepentant whore, a traitor, an infant, a bastard, a worm, (you are) not my daughter.”

Then she called Maladicta human. Which was just below the belt.

When asked, quite calmly, to clarify the basis of these statements, she screamed further obscenities and then claimed she’d seen her down in the village again doing, oh, something untoward, which probably meant _not_ violently necking with the townspeople. Maladicta sighed - Moth- _ther_ , the irritated huff of teenagers through the multiverse - and asked what she would have her do.  
To which her mother said, “Come with me,” and beckoned her, tight-lipped, to the cellar.

Nothing ever good happened in that cellar. Maladicta followed anyway.

It smelled of blood, which did not surprise her; there was someone fresh in there, which did. Usually she knew when her mother was going hunting. Usually it was announced. And yet here was a young man chained to the wall, looking defeated but, well, mostly annoyed, as if he was thinking, _Of all the possible ways to die, it has to be this?_

His neck was already bleeding. She rolled her eyes. Oh, this was meant to be temptation.

“Drink,” said her mother. “Prove what you are. Join us again as a daughter of the n–”

“Oh, shut up.” She went over and ripped the chains out of the wall, tipping her head in the direction of the cellar door. He looked at her for a moment and then fled as fast as he could with links rattling past his feet, ran past her mother, who didn’t even look at him. Who was staring at her with impotent fury.

“You – !”

“Don’t call me names again, Mother, you’re embarrassing yourself.” Maladicta smoothed down her skirts, readjusted her corset, eyed her mother coolly. “And I do have an identity beyond the b-word. I am reminding you because it appears you haven’t _noticed_.”

“No,” her mother hissed, one long, absurd, impractical nail pointing directly at her face. “You don’t. You are one of us. You will always be one of us. If you think you can make it out there in the world without sustenance and without us, you’re deluded. Insane, or stupid. It remains to be seen.”

Maladicta’s eyes narrowed. “Oh?” she said, tone light. _Oh, no._

“That’s right. You’ll feed. One day in your long, useless life you’ll cross a battlefield, and you’ll smell the hunger, and you’ll remember who you are. You’ll feed.”

“Mm.” She pushed her mother’s hand out of her face and smiled sweetly. “You’ll want to clip those claws of yours, Mother, or someone will clip them for you.”

She didn’t say what she was going to do. That would have made it too easy. But she was fairly certain that when her mother found a silk bag full of long black hair tossed with artful carelessness on the bed, she’d know. Unknowingly, she’d issued a challenge. And Maladicta _always_ rose to a challenge.

She stole a sword from one of the coats of arms and swung it cheerfully on her way to enlist. It was pleasantly heavy. She bit her nails along the way.


End file.
